Not sure. I mean for sure disobeying, doubting, is not out of love. Peter loved the Lord, had a righteous relationship with Jesus, believed Him, but, like Adam, sinned, fell.
Yes, and that only means that Peter wasn’t yet perfected. One way to define this perfection is to say we must love God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. A tall order, but not at all impossible with God.
Perhaps. I would just like to see it played in Catholic teaching, beyond the muddled and vague teaching of Purgatory. You underplay it perhaps but have not read any Catholic teaching on the differeing judgements. It is more than a reward thing. It is undertsanding the books and judgements found at least in Revelation and others.
The rewards thing isn’t a big topic in Scripture and I think Catholics focus more on the Big Prize, God, Himself, over any others. As far as the afterlife, little is known about
any of it: heaven, hell, or purgatory. Either way, strides must be made in our actually living righteously and confirming that righteousness, as judged by God, or our justification and all it entails is meaningless.
By and large all the ancient churches in the east and the west affirm some kind of final purification. We can’t even “see” God until our hearts are truly pure; we aren’t
capable; we don’t particularly
want to see Him because our distance from Him consists in being distracted by other, lesser things- ourselves to begin with- that we idolize above Him first of all. This state of purification is
merciful, and acknowledges that a person has invested their talents and grown in justice and certainly not returned to some grave sin after having tasted of the heavenly gift.
But…no sinners enter heaven; some of the NT letters are quite clear on this as is Revelation, not speaking of rewards other than eternal life here:
“Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to each one according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”
Blessed are those who wash their robe so that they may have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by its gates. But outside are the dogs, the sorcerers, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices.
Faith has a
goal-of producing virtue in us for one thing.
I wonder if he knew that himself.